Michael Wittmann

Michael Wittmann (22 April 1914-8 August 1944) was a Hauptsturmfuhrer (Captain) of the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany. Wittmann served as a tank commander during World War II and drove the Poles out of Poland in his first campaign in 1939, but he was killed by the Polish at St.-Aigan-de-Cramesnil in the Falaise Gap in France on 8 August 1944.

Biography
Wittmann was born in Vogelthal in the Kingdom of Bavaria, a state of the German Empire (present-day Germany) on 22 April 1914. He joined the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in October 1934 at the age of 20 and served in the German military during their annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland (Czech Republic) in 1938 while the commander of an armored car platoon. As a soldier in Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, Wittmann took part in the invasion of Poland in September 1939 in the first campaign of World War II, giving some members of the Polish 4th Armored Division a vendetta against him. He also took part in the invasion of France, and he gained fame as a tank commander in the war on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union from June 1941 to January 1944. In April, his unit was sent to Normandy in northern France in anticipation for the Allied invasion of Europe, and he took command of some German armored forces that made their base on the Caen-Falaise Road during the Falaise Gap campaign. Wittmann engaged the Polish 4th Armored Division in the Battle of St. Aigan-de-Cramesnil on 8 August 1944 in what was to become his last battle. Having fled from a Polish Sherman tank commanded by Major Stan Jackowicz, he was eventually shot at by Allied planes with missiles and his tank was trapped. The Polish tank fired the last four shots, destroying his tank and killing him.